3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Black Adam

2022, Jaume Collet-Serra (Run All Night) -- download

I saw the director's name, and assumed this was one of those situations where Hollywood took a rather well known European director and assigned him a blockbuster. But then I looked back at his repertoire and was reminded that most of his stuff as been the B-movie thriller stuff I usually enjoy, nothing high falootin' at all.

That said, I did not enjoy this movie. 

Sure, I went so far as to download a 4K copy and it was spectacular in its colours and visuals, even not on the Big Screen, but I kept wondering what the point of the movie was. Its part of one of the n-th versions of the DC Cinematic Universe, connected in one form or another to the most recent movies, yet divesting itself enough to leave us wondering just why Superman or Wonder Woman haven't shown up to deal with a demi-god level powered being slaughtering folks in.... the Middle East? As to why Amanda Waller sends a black second-grade Batman (Hawk Man; I know he's more than that, but in this movie he seems to be a rich guy with lots of toys, and only one real teammate) to deal with a brown-skinned super man -- there's an ire generating tweet in there somewhere.

Khandaq-not-Wakanda in ancient times has a kid rebelling against a mad king who is stripping the country of its valuable metal eternium-not-vibranium, until the Council of Wizards gives the kid SHAZAM powers and he kills the mad king. Fast forward to now and Khandaq is definitely not Wakanda, having been exploited for its metal (though we never see what they do with it) by many invading forces, this most recent time being Intergang. Adrianna and her brave band of freedom fighters are trying to find the Crown of Sabbac, an eternium forged crown worn by the mad king, supposedly containing demons, so they can... oh, I don't remember. But they fuck up and wake up Teth-Adam. Does "teth" mean black? Who knows, but it might as well. In a rollicking, high body count battle, Adam floats around zapping soldiers to death with lightning, but saves Adrianna so she can escape with the crown. This first fight is spectacular, all not-super Superman style action of invulnerability, flying and glorious mass destruction, if you like your super men slaughtering dozens. It ends when he gets blown up by an eternium missile. Ooo, he has a not-kryptonite weakness? Nevermind, as they pretty much forget that for the rest of the movie.

Teth-Adam wakes up The Justice Society (well, two of them) at the behest of Amanda Waller (?!?!) and two subs: Cyclone and Atom Smasher. None of this made any sense to me, and I even have a passing knowledge of these characters. A supe with Superman level of power has awoken, and I would understand if they were sending in a B-grade team for recon and intel, but nope, Carter Hall / Hawkman decides to try to beat the shit out of this new SuperVillain, bringing along two junior superheroes and Dr. Fate, who keeps on taking off his fucking helmet, so we can see his face. Hall just growls and threatens his way through the entire movie getting his ass regularly kicked, despite him having his own standard-level super strength. The rest quip and smirk: Dr. Fate is old and full of wisdom and magic, Atom Smasher just inherited the suit and the powers, and Cyclone is young, but seems solid enough and has the most glorious not-Starfire purple hair. Despite good efforts, and tons and TONS of collateral damage and (not depicted) deaths of hundreds (with the destruction they cause, it could not be avoided) they barely scratch Adam. Call the Justice League? Not yet.

The thing is, if they had just left him alone, he probably would have floated away. He wasn't interested in being Khandaq's resident superhero, despite his growing affection for Adrianna's enthusiastic son Amon. He seems non-plussed about all the technology despite learning it is 5000 years later and just glowers his way through most scenes, seemingly forgetting doors exist as he slowly, almost gently, continually smashes through Adrianna & Amon's apartment walls. They are not getting their damage deposit back. I did chuckle when the movie finally acknowledges that bit. But still, if Hall had just stopped beating his spinny mace on Adam's head for a moment, things might have ended sooner than they did. But all this battle is McGuffiny for the real stakes are the Crown of Sabbac, which the leader of Intergang wants so he can resurrect/summon/transform into a demon-king of Khandaq. Call the Justice League? Nope. We now have a CGI villain reject from Diablo III game to fight.

So, why didn't this movie work when pretty much all the Marvel movies do. Bias? Somewhat. Familiarity? Eventually. But they all, even the worst of them, have a digestible structure and work with us to build bonds to the characters. This is supposed to be the anti-hero movie, and purposely skips building any bonds to any character other than The Rock. But despite some lame attempts at justification (he was fighting evil), he is just not a likeable character. Even the middling production in Samaritan did a better job connecting us to a villain than this movie does. It all just ends up feeling... so empty.

Hopefully, now that James Gunn has some control over the cinematic aspects of the DC universe, we will see improvement on the screen, for I can unabashedly say that his movie, The Suicide Squad is the best thing in the DC cinematic universe and it does an incredible job of making us like/enjoy anti-heroes. I am not saying the same tone should have applied to this movie, but... there should have been something, anything, to make us actually like Teth-Adam beyond who is playing him?

Kent's post - we agree.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Vesper

2022,  Kristina Buožytė, Bruno Samper (ABCs of Death 2 - K is for Knell) -- download

This is one of those movies, no not one for The Shelf that would be rewatched over and over, but one for the other shelf, the ones that seem to be made for me. Post-Apocalyptic, Scifi, gritty and creative, full of evocative imagery where a special effects team was allowed to do as they envisioned. Oh, that may be me just emoting upon the satisfying visuals of the movie, and Buožytė & Samper may have controlled each and every image with their own vision, but it still feels like a labour of love, from either side. It reminds me of those animated shorts, the kind that distill scifi ideas and visuals into just what they need to be, extended into a feature length film.

The world has been ravaged by bio-engineering leaving it a wasteland with few edible plants, no animals and a vast garden of danger. Humanity has been reduced to have's and have-nots. Those inside the Citadels live a life of luxury and ease, while those outside barely survive, depending on time-bombed seeds (one harvest only) that the Citadels sells them.

Vesper (Raffiella Chapman, His Dark Materials) lives with her dad (Richard Blake, Barbarian), a soldier for the Citadels, left incapacitated and bed-ridden, relying on Vesper for everything and communicating via a floating drone that accompanies his daughter everywhere. She is utterly loyal to her father. Meanwhile, her uncle Jonas (Eddie Marsan, The Gentlemen) lives in a village nearby, where he harvests and sells the blood of children he raises as his own. A sky ship from the citadel crashes into the swamps; Vesper rescues one passenger, a beautiful young woman named Camellia (Rosy McEwan, The Alienist). Jonas and his sycophants find and murder the other passenger. Vesper hides Camellia from her uncle, as she sees some sort of salvation coming from the woman. Jonas just wants to use her.

The story is rather rote for these kind of movies, but the performances and the world they are interacting with is what kept me here. Marsan slides along the fine line of creepy, resourceful and ruthless, while Chapman is convincing of her high intelligence, belying her adolescence, and Blake, more often than not just a voice, gives us a man of wisdom and guidance, more compelling than the last time we saw him bed ridden (Barbarian). 

But for me, it was the world building that kept my attention. Plants have become the predators in this world, even supplanting humans as the most dangerous animals, but each carries a beauty in colour and form, and Vesper artfully navigates her world, seeing the dangers as more chore than actual danger. We see very little of the Citadels but they represent what destroyed the world, caring more for their comforts than other people, going so far as to create other people, called jugs, which they consider less than beasts, and even lower than the humans they relegate to slow death outside their walls. Of course, the remaining humans are more often than not, beastly.

KWIF: The Bad Batch (+3)

Kent's Week In Film #2
The Bad Batch - 2016, d. Ana Lily Amirpour - Netflix
Alice, Sweet Alice - 1976, d. Alfred Sole - Xumo
Red Sonja - 1985, d. Richard Fleischer - DVD
The 39 Steps - 1939, d. Alfred Hitchcock - SilverScreenClassics

After watching Ana Lily Amirpour's A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night I was intrigued by her bold, confident style, and her deep and very broad genre interests, only to find that she was also the creator of The Bad Batch, a film I'd been very intrigued by back when it came out in 2016, but never got around to watching.  I don't think I ever knew the premise, just the strong imagery of desert scenes, a one-armed woman, and a pair of yellow cutoffs with a smiley face on the ass.  I thought it was a post-apocalyptic scenario, but it's even more genrefied than that.

The unwanted of American society, the troublemakers, the mentally disturbed, the illegal, the criminal are scuttled into a no man's  land outside the Texas border, a desolate space with no laws and nobody watching.  Anything goes.  We follow Arlen (Suki Waterhouse), an uneducated southern twentysomething, as she's tattooed and entered swiftly into the gates.  She sets off with virtually nothing and is quickly found by the bodybuilding cannibals, aka the Bridge People.  They take her arm and her leg, but after a time she manages an escape, to be accepted into Comfort, a civilization within the outcasts, where there's commerce, housing, comfort and calm, and a border to protect them. But all of this is thanks to The Dream (Keanu Reeves), who has managed to find luxury amidst the shit, in part thanks to his aptitude for making drugs, giving back to the people, and generally running a cult.  He clearly has a pipeline into the outside world.

Jason Momoa is MiamiMan, one of the beefy cannibals who finds a stoned Arlen in the desert while looking for his missing kid, and knowing she might be in Comfort, charges Arlen with the task of helping recover her.  There are sparks...very confusing sparks. 

The film ambles, often quietly (there's not a lot of dialogue for the first half of the movie) allowing the viewer to take stock of the environment of this very open prison, to get a sense of the people within it, and not everyone is what they seem.  The curious choice Amirpour makes is we never really get to know Arlen  We don't know what she did, we don't truly know what kind of person she is.  Ultimately she's a survivor, and so is MiamiMan, which may explain the connection.

It's an unconventional film with an unconventional narrative, a real sense that anything could happen.  In other hands it may have accelerated into something action-oriented, or even more horrific.  The opening moments of the film are filled with utter dread, but when the worst basically happens to Arlen in the first five minutes, there's not really anywhere else to go, terror wise.  It probably could have used a little more action, or horror, or something just to elevate its blood pressure.

At one point, the film starts positioning itself as a revenge thriller, and then completely abandons it.  Amirpour is savvy in knowing the cinematic language and using it against the audience.  Sure, it subverts expectations but it needed to deliver then in other ways.  In the end it's a curious outlier of a film, not really fitting into any specific genre, but weaving through many, yet never fully embracing them.  It's also a surprisingly star-addled affair, thought you might never know it.  Outside of Momoa, there's an unrecognizable Jim Carrey, an unmistakable Keanu nailing a no-pressure performance, and Giovanni Ribisi as a mentally trouble townsman, plus Diego Luna almost completely obscured as a DJ.

Amirpour knows her lenses, and while her song selection isn't as tight as A Girl Walks Home... she still adeptly uses those needledrops throughout, but the film struggles to find its narrative function.  I love world building, and it's clear Amirpour does as well, but it also needs to be populated with interesting characters (which she has) and a story to drive it.  The ending of The Bad Batch is virtually the same as that of A Girl Walks Home..., just the angle of approach to getting there is different.

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A recommendation from the Quentin Tarantino/Roger Avery "Video Archives" podcast as part of their look at "American Giallo". Once you get past the awkward timing of nearly every scene in Alice, Sweet Alice, (aka Communion) there's a rather gripping murder-mystery/suspense thriller.  It starts with a child's murder for which another child is blamed.  Kind of daring. I knew going in that Alice wasn't the murderer, but I think if you went in cold, it would only be the first act, at most, where you would suspect Alice of the crime. There wasn't a long-term plan here to deceive the audience. 

The actual murderer is revealed at the end of the second act, which then spends time with them, givings us some insight into who and why they are. It's a little disjointed from act to act, as the focus shifts from one character to the next, and sadly Alice is pretty much gone from the film's second half, yet somehow it all hangs together quite well. 

There are some surprising attacks and murders, and that great, soupy, bright red 70's blood is put to great effect. This revolves a lot around church, and I don't quite grok the message, but it's obviously not one that thinks highly of Catholicism.  

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Red Sonja. The money is up there on screen, all 17 million dollars of it. The sets and costumes are quite amazing. It's just too bad the direction is so uninspired and the script is as tired as the most generic of Italian-shot sword-and-sandals fare from 20 years earlier, and far less charming. Even the master, Ennio Morricone, seems to be sleepwalking through his score 

What is most surprising his how poorly acted it is. When Ernie Reyes Jr's hammy hyperactive obligatory 80's kid sidekick is the best you got going for you... hooboy. Besides Reyes, only Nielsen really seems to be giving it a real go, it's just she's not a good actress. She can sell the sword fights better than anyone in the movie, and she looks convincingly intimidating 50% of the time, but it's not nearly enough to really sell this character, nor the romance with Arnold (was that Arnold's first ever kissing scene at the end? Hallmark movies are more convincing). And that wig? Moof.

The film tries to be a semi lighthearted adventure, as was the style at the time, but it needed more seriousness, a bit of grit. This needed to be a hard R, with more blood and violence, you know barbarian shit. Nix the kid prince and his not-quite comic relief babysitter, and toughen Sonja up some more... we should never see her smile.  And Arnold... just make him Conan...who are we trying to fool here? 

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What Hitchcock does in The 39 Steps that I absolutely love is he keeps the actors busy, there's movement in every scene.  When there's exposition to get out, the players have other things they need to be doing at the same time, be it making a meal or trying to file off a handcuff or check out the scene outside the window.  It's a small thing, but it makes a huge, huge difference in how a scene plays from just static two heads talking.  What is being spoken at times can be life or death, but the world does not stop for it.  Every scene in the movie is immersive in this way.

Often in the action around the main characters is where Hitch's sense of humour comes out, such as the train sequence where our Canadian hero Richard Hannay (Robert Donat), on the run from the law after being accused of murder, is sharing a booth with two women's undergarments salesmen.  Hannay's anxiety about being found out is just bristling with tension, but it's completely undercut by the men's prime focus, discussions of their trade interspersed with their utter disinterest in the murder they just read in the newspaper.

Hitch perfected the mistaken-identity layman-on-the-run with North by Northwest but The 39 Steps is a pretty damn good prototype.  It's rare for a film from 1939 to have surprises (because if they're any good at all, the good stuff tends to get cribbed and rehashed over time) and yet the story here doesn't follow the traditional layman-on-the-run set up so there are a lot of unexpected deviations, as if Hitch is tired of the genre tropes before they've even really been established yet.  There are a couple of moments bordering on deus ex machina, allowing Hannay an easier escape than likely, but they're not egregious enough to bring down the film's enjoyment.  

Star Wars: Andor Season1

2022, Disney+ - 12 episodes
created by Tony Gilroy

Back in 2016 when Rogue One hit the theatres, I was in the pocket for Gareth Edwards.  I had quite enjoyed Monsters and I thought his Godzilla was pretty great. The rumours that swirled around the trouble behind the scenes of Rogue One I thought, certainly, were in spite of his efforts, and that the film that resulted was still largely his film.  But the rumour was that Tony Gilroy, screenwriter of the Bourne Series and writer/director of Michael Clayton, had extensively rewritten and reshot the film, and that it was largely a success because of his efforts.  I thought Gilroy an imposter.  I had heard he wasn't a Star Wars fan, that this was just a dispassionate work-for-hire gig for him, and so there's no way this guy, with no great love for the property, could have contributed anything great, right? 

Feed me all your crow, I'm ready to eat it.

Gilroy has masterminded not just an amazing Star Wars show, but a mature drama that's a perfect entry for the new golden age of television. It's a sweeping ensemble drama that could very well be an Earth-based political thriller but with half the intensity and likely a fraction of the viewership.  There's something very potent about using something like the Star Wars universe as a platform to tell a story about fascism, tyranny, oppression, complacency, subversion, resistance, and rebellion, and the impact such dramatic systems have on so many different types of people affected by them.

Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) is our titular character, and the de-facto lead, but there are so many other characters who have their own journeys that never directly engage with him.  Cassian, searching for his long lost sister, runs afoul of local law enforcement.  Their harassment leads to the accidental death of one officer, and then the outright murder of the other.  The death of these officers is the first domino in a chain reaction that splits off into muliple factions that spiral and climb and zigzag in such surprising directions all while examining the reality of what the Star Wars galaxy was like just as the Empire was at it's height, 5 years before A New Hope came along.

Cassisan's friend Bix (Adria Arjona) has been a fence for his stolen Imperial goods for years.  He's caught the attention of Luthen (Stellan Skarsgard), who is sort of the secret puppeteer of the rebellion behind closed doors.  Not yet a definite collective force against the Emprie, but rather a series of independent operators, Luthen is maybe the only one who knows who all these players are.  He wants Cassian as a new recruit, but Cass is too jaded, and a little to self-reflexive, so instead he's hired as part of a crew for a job, which is to steal a regional cachet of credits from the Empire.  

While Cassian meets his new crew, all as wary of him as he is of them, and they sort of put each other through their paces in preparing for the job, things back home are getting worse.  An attempt to capture Cassian by the regional security force went horribly awry. Syril Karn (Kyle Soller), the morally righteous deputy inspector who led the assault, finds himself severly tested when he loses everything as the Empire takes over and the entire security force is shut down.  Syril goes back to living with his mother (Kathryn Hunter) who approaches Syril with sugar in one hand and lye in the other.  Their scenes together, perhaps the most gloriously pedestrian ever in a Star Wars production, are also some of the series best.  It just goes to show that, for all the high drama of family dynamics of the Skywalker Saga, there are just normal parent/adult child relationships in this universe, full of backhanded compliments, bitter truths, and sarcasm.  Plus in these scenes with Syril and his mom, we get to see just every day mundanity in Star Wars...what people eat, how they act when they're just getting on with life, making do in this shitty galaxy.

Syril's debacle on Ferrix yields one small nugget, a stolen piece of technology which catches the attention of the Imperial Security Bureau, the special investigative service of the Empire that sniff out the problems big and small for the Empire, and crush them... a galactic KGB if you will.  One agent, Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) has to navigate fierce competition within the bureau, as well as some intense bureaucratic protocols that make it really hard to do her job, but she's piecing together that maybe a lot of the small acts of sedition against the Empire on different planets across the galaxy are perhaps not unrelated, and that the thief Cassian Andor may be the key to unravelling it all.

On the other side, senator Mon Mothma (a returning Genevieve O'Reilly), an opulent, erudite crusader for the well being of not just her constituents, but all of the galaxy, is more than aware that the senate is just a farce, with many of her colleagues utter toadies of the Emperor's and whatever resistance she puts on in Senate chambers is merely a show that is being allowed to happen, so that it can't be said the other side is not represented.  She, however, is back-channel funding resistance fighting through Lucien, but is finding moving her money around much more difficult with further Imperial lockdown as a result of the heist upon the Imperial reservoir Cassian was involved in.

The heist at the mid-point of the series, is an intense climax to a slow-burn lead-in.  From Cassian's perspective, it did not go well, but he got out alive.  From Lucien's perspective, it was a success whether or not it succeeded.  Just the mere attempt would result in a over-reactive response, which Lucien knows will further tamp down on individual rights and freedoms and shake people out of their complacency about the Empire and the evil its spilling across the galaxy.  If Lucien wants to build a serious rebellion, he's going to need people who are motivated to fight, bodies to throw at the front lines and smarter bodies to do the dirty work that needs doing in the background.

Star Wars, for years, had been so black-and-white, good guys versus bad guys.  The prequels introduced the ideas of a political reality that lead to this structure, a political nature where one man saw a broken system and was conniving enough to exploits the cracks to ultimate power.  Slowly over time, things change, the grip tightens and control becomes ultimate. But those structures are not simple ones, it's not just the oppressed and the oppressors, rulers and resisters... there's whole systems of middlepersons who grease the wheels and keep the machines of rule and rebellion going.  Nothing happens without money, without conviction, without belief in their causes.

There's no doubt that the Empire is full of work-a-day people just doing jobs, fearing for their life if they don't perform up to snuff.  But there are also believers, those that think that no matter how the work is done and costs that result, it's justified, a cause of galactic peace and order worth every sacrifice, including one's own conscience.  And we see the same in the mirror of the rebellion, of men and women who know that the only avenue to defeating the enemy and liberating the people from their tyranny is by relieving themselves of their conscience in order to meet them on their own playing field.

Gilroy understands the human side of this star war and he drills right down into it.  He wants us not to focus on the biggest picture, but the mosaic that makes up the bigger picture.  There's only so many small stories he can tell in the time he's given, but his ancillary characters all seem to have an inner life in a way that so many peripheral characters in Obi-Wan Kenobi or Book of Boba Fett did not.  Those other Disney+ series struggled with their storytelling, which felt like stretching a film over multipe hours and episodes to no superior effect, and no additional rewards in their telling.  Like Oshea Jackson Jr. turned up in many scenes in Obi-Wan but there was no character there, no sense that he exists outside of those moments that need him to exist.  Here, every character feels a part of something, living a life outside of the story or stories that intersect or impede upon what they were doing.

The sprawling nature of the show comes at an expense, and that's a dramatic lack of elaborate aliens.  There's not the usual diaspora of life in this Star Wars entry as we're used to, and there's multiple ways to think about that.  It's an opulent, expensive show...it looks fantastic and can not have been cheap to construct all those sets, all those wardrobes , and all those extras (the Volume, the 360 degree digital screen environment built for The Mandalorian, which seemed to confine Obi-Wan extensively and much of Boba Fett, seems absent here, and if it is used, is not at all obvious), so the concession was likely a drastic reduction in the number of creatures and special effects needed.  There are a few of each, but sparing.  At the same time, this is a very human tale, and a lack of aliens really roots it in that humanity.  Sometimes in-story there is a logical reason for it to be all humans (prisoners separate by their homeland, for instance, to reduce conflict and communication problems) as well as the never-spoken-but-we-all-know-it fact that the Empire, space Nazis that they are, believe a human race the superior race and have no problem with genocide.  If anything, the lack of aliens raises awareness of the lack of aliens..it's noticeable, and should be noted.

I cannot gush enough about this series.  Each episode left me wanting more, and eagerly anticipating the following Wednesday when more would come.  I would sit watching with a big, dumb smile on my face, reveling in the little details but also the joy of having a really adult Star Wars show that has something to say about these human, political and economic structures that confine us.  There's a definite rise in fascistic mentality in the world in recent years, a lot of fear displaced into reactionary conservative politics, handing power over to people incapable of utilizing if for the betterment of anyone but themselves.  For all the efforts of The Force Awakens, that type of simplistic revisionism that descends into and action and spectacle heavy production doesn't inspire one to think too much about the structures that lead to tyranny and complacency about tyranny.  Here, it's front and center, in every moment...the parallels to real life can be drawn at almost any moment.  Hopefully it's inspiring, but at the very least it's thoroughly compelling.

A second/final season is in pre-production and can't come fast enough.  This may not be STAR WARS of the flash-bang space-wizard laser-sword variety, but it definitely has its place.  The hope is that this is just the first of stories like this, not the only.  More than any other Star Wars, it's the riskiest endeavour, its most challenging to the status quo of what we Star Wars fans know and will accept, and I will happily take more.

Everything Everywhere All at Once (MV1)

2022, Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert (Swiss Army Man) -- cinema

OK Toasty, what's up with seeing a rare movie in the cinema and then not even writing about the most exciting, most enthralling thing you have seen in ages? Sure, you can tent pole the requirement to rewatch it again, as it was available for OnDemand / Download even before you got home from the cinema, but ... you didn't rewatch, did you? And why are you using that as an excuse to not write about your most enjoyable movie experience in quite some time?

<hangs head>

Sorry.

I have always been a fan of the multiverse concept. The idea that there are an infinite number of universes existing at the same time, in an overlapping state, is supposedly an idea based in science, but really, that's when the level of postulating bleeds into science fiction. One concept of the multiverse is that every single choice every single person makes creates an "alternate timeline" or an entirely new universe wherein that was the choice. That means an awful lot of very similar universe, but with only VERY minor variations. It also ties the idea purely to sentient beings. The radically far end of the spectrum, in pop culture not scientific postulation that is, likes to have things massively different from universe to universe. Think the "mirror universe" from the Star Treks. I don't suggest Googling the actual science concepts, unless you want your brain to ache.

The fun in multiverses comes when you get to interact with another one. In one (I have many) of the "novels being written mostly in my head" something happens and a bunch of universes collide and combine, leaving our planet like a quilt of universes mashed together. In another, there is a prime world (ours) and then a universe for every single fiction we, as a people, have ever conceived, including individual fantasy. Most multiverse fictions have someone traversing from their own over to a single other universe. But, IMO, the real fun comes when you can visit A LOT of other universes.

Everything Everywhere All at Once postulates an entirely new idea, in that technology allows people of the "alpha" universe (oh the conceit, that there is always a prime universe, the "real" one, while all others are extensions or bad copies) to not travel to other universes, but draw upon the skills and personalities of their other-universe counter-parts. The body may stay in one universe, but the mind can draw upon another's knowledge, or take control. Alas, that technology use did not go well for the alpha's.

Gawddammit, still haven't rewatched it !!

Everything.

Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh, Star Trek: Discovery) and Waymond Wang (Ke Huy Quan, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) run a laundromat. Its a bit of a mess. Their life is more than a bit of a mess. While Evelyn seems intimately aware of all the workings of the place, her husband is rather flighty (leaves googley eyes on everything), she is swamped in an IRS audit going badly, her unforgiving father has recently arrived to live with them, and the tension with her daughter is hitting a high, as Joy (Stephanie Hsu, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel) brings home her GF to meet the family, just before a laundromat customer appreciation party (Chinese New Year? Party for her father?). Evelyn does not seem happy, her husband (despite his giddy reaction to everything) even less so, as he is trying to catch his wife's attention long enough to give her divorce papers.

And then the other Waymond reaches out to Evelyn.

P.S. ReWatch Complete! 

Quan does such a good job of switching gears from Waymond, the silly set upon husband, to Waymond the multiverse soldier. While in the elevator, he puts his glasses away, pulls out a small umbrella to hide them from the camera, and then proceeds to tell Evelyn quickly about what is going on, as well as installing their equipment: dual mid-2000s style hands-free earpieces. After a bit of disorienting configuration, DING they are on the 10th floor. "Wow, fast elevator, " this universe's Waymond says.

This whole opening act introduces us to the war going on between agents of the AlphaVerse (the first universe to discover the others, and learn how to connect) and the Jojo Siwa Jobu Tupaki. AlphaWaymond believes he has found a special warrior in Evelyn, someone who has made all the disappointing choices for her life, leading her to ... here, a tax audit. We solidify that introduction with the most fantastic fight sequence, between AlphaWaymond and some unfortunate security guards, after Evelyn misunderstands an instruction to fight back, and punches Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis, Freaky Friday) the auditor, in the nose. From there, in just trying to escape the IRS building, we learn all about the multiverse and what is going on. And the Bagel. Hail the Bagel. 

This opening also introduces us to the style of directing from The Dans, and the range of our actors. It constantly, quickly shifts from humorous, to uncomfortably emotional, to absolutely ludicrous. I honestly never thought Michelle Yeoh had this in her, as she has always been so fucking regal in my mind. But she pulls off the shifts from mundanity to silliness to action so well, I was marvelling all over again in the rewatch. And while I am less familiar with Quan's work, the switches between silly Waymond, complete with high pitched Shortround voice, to suave Hong Kong drama Waymond, so slick in his black suit, are fantastic. I am so glad he is back to acting. But isn't it a little on the nose that his next project is season 2 of Loki ?

Anywayz, things just progress, and get sillier, and more dramatic, and more tear-jerkingly moving. Soooo much goes on, but when thinking of how to recap it, I realized plot-wise it all happens within a very very condensed time period. So much of the movie takes place inside the IRS building that the are desperate to escape, occasionally shifting to another universe where they just left quietly after the audit meeting, and are in the party at the laundromat. But, by then, Evelyn is fully versed (pun intended) in verse jumping, and is now desperate to understand her power well enough to save her daughter. She is beginning to see that even in the universes where she made the best possible choices (basically becomes Michelle Yeoh), there are disappointments. And we visit more than a few nonsense universes, each that have their own just-right amount of sweetness and poignancy. And disturbing aspects -- hotdogs for fingers are fine, but squirting mustard and ketchup from finger tips?!?!?

Eventually, Evelyn finds her centre. Her place. Her real universe. Which also doesn't quite say everything, because Evelyn is now in all universes, everywhere, all at once. But she is accepting it and has a chance to be happy about it/them.

Kent's MV post.

I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching (Kent Edition) - *Another* Another One

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent(me) or Toasty attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But we can't not write cuz that would be bad, very bad.  60 hour work weeks at work bad.

What I Am/Have Been Watching is the admitted state of typically Toast, but in this case, Kent, spending too much time in front of the TV. But what else has the pandemic been about if not toobin? Sure, we got a few breaks from being confined at home, and might have actually gone outside (gasp!) and socialized with (double-gasp!) human beings (faint-dead-away) but we always ended up back on the sofa, flicker in hand, trying to find something to watch amidst the many streaming services pillaging our credit cards every month...and yeah, Kent still has cable.

"Another One" is quick thoughts on subsequent seasons of things I've already watched/reviewed on the blog.  I'm going to reread (and link to) my review(s) of previous seasons and see what, if anything, different I have to say about them in comparison....

The Flight Attendant Season 2 - HBO/Crave

Season 1

I was incredibly satisfied with Season 1, an utterly compelling, delightful surprise of a murder-mystery/substance abuse/personal trauma/espionage comedy-thriller.  Yeah, it juggled a lot of balls and it did so expertly.  By the end of the first season it closed off the main threads that a second season didn't really seem at all necessary.  When you have something this complete, this good, you almost hate to go back to it and ruin it with more. I had intended to just avoid season 2, but I believe a lull in the schedule and perhaps a snippet of a trailer was enough to pique my interest and bring me back in.  

Season 2 is definitely not as tight as season 1.  It has an exceptionally strong, resonant story about Kaley Cuoco's titular flight attendant having relocated from New York to California, and working through a recovery program to stay sober... and failing, all while working as liaison to the CIA (and circumnavigating said work for her own interests).  It's the glue that holds the season together and absolutely the most compelling aspect.  Where it doesn't quite gel is in the comings and goings of the returning cast from the prior season.  Despite the fact that the mystery/espionage aspect centers much around an on-the-run Rosie Perez, Perez isn't much of a focal character, to the point that when they do decide to focus on her and the family she abandoned it feels more like filling time than an honest attempt at character exploration.  A lot of this awkwardness can be chalked up to COVID shooting, and a great deal of Cuoco's scenes have her performing against herself (as she battles with her darker urges and wrestles with exploring her past traumas more deeply).  I don't know what's left for a third season (and there's certainly nothing at the end of this season demanding such), but I'm genuinely invested in the character, and I think it would be fairly blank slate for pretty much anything to happen in a return season.

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Never Have I Ever Season 3 - Netflix

Season 1 | Season 2

I absolutely love the first two seasons of Never Have I Ever.  In my opinion it's Netflix's best original situation comedy.  I've watched the first season three times and the second twice, and the third season was hotly anticipated, to the point that we effectively binged the entire season in one marathon sitting.  It's almost unfair to the show to binge it so hard, just mowing down, barely tasting the comedy, or the drama, rather than savouring it one or two episodes at a time over multiple days (or weeks even).  But it is a show that is so dramatically propulsive that it demands binge watching.

This season starts with Devi and Paxton as an honest-to-gosh item, but it's very clear (as it has been in the past) that they're not a perfect match.  They're very different people, but also each struggling with their own insecurities that prevent them from having an honest relationship.  The great thing about the series is Devi doesn't keep repeating her same mistakes from prior seasons...no, she just finds new ones.  

We spend more time this season with the broader cast, though Devi is still the main focus.  There's another Ben-centric episode and Paxton feels more fleshed out as a person, rather than just eye-candy.  Nalini, Kamala, Fabiola, and Eleanor all seem to have their own growth moments and entertaining sub-plots that seem to share equal time.  The device of John McEnroe narrating Devi's innermost thoughts is still paying very strong, very hilarious dividends. But it's still Maitreyi Ramakrishnan as Devi leading this all.  She's been good from the outset, but she's downright amazing this season, just fully in control of the emotionally out-of-control Devi.  Just a massive, massive talent.  This may not be the strongest season story-wise, but it is Ramakrishnan's finest outing yet.

This season seemed to end almost on a note that it was wrapping things up...but mercifully it looks like a fourth season is on its way next year.  I cannot wait, but I can always rewatch in the interim.

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Only Murders In The Building Season 2 - Disney+

Season 1

Much like The Flight Attendant, the first season of Only Murders In The Building was such an effective surprise, with an equally satisfying resolution, that I didn't necessarily need another season.  Unlike The Flight Attendant I wasn't worried about a subsequent season treading on the goodwill imbued by the first, since the real draw was the trio of Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez.  They're each such radically different performers and personalities that their blending in this show is just some potent alchemy.  

The end of the first season had the "Only Murders" podcasting gang being the top suspects in another murder in the building, of the recently "retired" head of the tenant board, Bunny.  The death of Bunny leads to very public exposure for the trio, which brings new people into their sphere (some old faces from their past), as well as a very meta podcast about their podcast from on of the top true crime podcasters (a returning Tina Fey).  The police release them after interrogation but continue to monitor them, meanwhile it's revealed that they may have a more personal connection to this then just being wrongfully accused.

The mystery isn't as strong this season, but it does effectively provide the jumping off point for investigating our leads at this very moment.  The show also manages to weave in some very effective returning guest spots from the prior season (thinking that perhaps we wouldn't see much of these characters again), and those become some of the finest moments of the series.  On the only really negative side, the inclusion of Amy Schumer as a version of herself as the new penthouse suite tenant (taking over from Sting) pulled me out of the show every time she appeared.  I generally like Schumer, but this appearance just didn't feel organic in the slightest.  The guest spot from Shriley MacLaine, however: magnificent.  Great fun.  Season 3 is teed up, and looks like a blast.

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Mythic Quest  Season 2 - AppleTV+

Season 1

As I write this, the third episode of Season 3 just dropped on Apple.  It hasn't been that long since I watched season 2, but already the memories are fading.  One of the threads finds Jo (Jessie Ennis) abandoning David (David Hornsby) to instead be Brad's (Danny Pudi) protege.  Jo going from David whom she can utterly manipulate like a puppet (but then David is such a beta pushover, anyone can do so) to the keen understudy of Brad's Sith-like teachings made for great comedy, but the power dynamic shifted in a great episode where Brad's brother comes to visit, and he's proves even more devious than Brad, and Jo thinks she has found an upper hand.

Another fantastic episode takes a step 40 years in the past to the mid-70s at a science fiction magazine where new recruit C.W. (F. Murray Abraham, but here portrayed by Josh Brener) finds likeminded souls in two of his fellow copy editors, all aspiring to be the next Asimov.  The story is a light drama (much like season 1's historical side-step into a tangential fore barer to Mythic Quest) but it pays off with a tense reunion between two of the three, featuring William Hurt's final performance, and honestly, it can draw a few tears.

The rest of the season stays exceptionally witty, the core of Ian (Rob McElhenney) and Poppy (Charlotte Nicado) strained relationship as co-developers evolving beautifully, their egos waxing and waning throughout.  It's wonderful to see what is basically a marriage story about a discontented couple who never stop arguing about their kid, only this couple is a game design partnership and the child is a game.  There's no "will they/won't they" here, the relationship they have is almost too much.  The season ends with a massive shake-up that could easily serve as a series finale, but it's intent was just fuel for season 3.  

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What We Do In The Shadows Season 4 - FX

reviews: Movie | Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3

Nandor (Kayvan Novak), still very much looking for love after the last season, gets a little push with the help of a Djinn who grants him 52 wishes.  Thinking deep back in his past, he asks the Djinn to resurrect his harem of 37 wives to see if any of them are his soul mate.  It surprisingly doesn't take long for Nandor to find the one, but then it's a pretty rapid road to discontentment.

Nadja (Natasia Demetriou), meanwhile, opens a vampire nightclub with the help of The Guide (Kristin Schaal returning, yay).  Things are wonky as she deals with labour troubles (those damn wraiths), faulty blood sprinklers, celebrity guests (Sophia Coppola and Jim Jarmush drop by for a spill), and money issues.

Guillermo (Harvey Guillen), looking after the house (which has fallen in disrepair quite dramatically) starts to look for happiness for himself, having a new long-distance boyfriend. Nobody ever lets him rest though, as he tries to keep all the plates spinning including hosting his living family for dinner with his vampire family.  It doesn't go well.

But the big event of the season is Lazlo (Matt Barry) raising Baby Colin (the uncanny valley of Mark Proksch's head on a baby or toddler or child's body as he rapidly grows this season).  The dynamic is so surreal and hilarious.

The best episode, however, finds stand-up duo the Sklar Brothers performing ala The Property Brothers and hosting a faux home renovation show as they fix up the homestead.  Despite the show already being a mocumentary format, switching to a home reno format is its own specific style that is clearly differentiated.  

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Rutherford Falls Season 2 - Showcase

Season 1

After having expected Season 1 to have more of an edge, but kindness porn winning out, I was better prepared for season 2, knowing that it's a gentler show with the only agenda of telling funny stories with a heavy (but not exclusive) Native American cultural focus.   

With Nathan Rutherford (Ed Helms) having learned that history is often told from a tainted lens, and been exposed publicly on a podcast for perpetuating the lies of his family's past, he disappeared from town for 6 months, and Reagan (Jana Schmieding) has taken over the town history museum with Bobby's (Jesse Leigh) help.  But Nathan turns out to have been hiding in a hidden room the whole time and Reagan draws him back out into public life just as an election for town mayor is called.  It's imperative to Terry's long-term plans for the town that his anti-progress nemesis, and front-runner, Feather Day (Letterkenny's Kaniehtiio Horn) isn't elected, so he looks to Nathan for support.  But Nathan instead nominate's young Bobby, who, despite their youth, seems more than up for the challenge.

As a whole, the season is very focused on the character journeys - Reagan finding love and trying to get land on the Res despite not being married or having a family; Terry having to confront his own limitations and start asking other people for help, despite the bruises to his ego; Nathan coming to grips with having no focus in life, and learning his fling with the former mayor has resulted in a pregnancy - yet each individual episode does tend to feel a little disjointed.  Even still, it's a charming show from start to finish each episode, and there's such warmth even when there's conflict.  There's absolutely no shame in kindness porn, and in fact we need more of it.  Sadly, Rutherford Falls was cancelled by Peacock... the streaming wars are going to see a lot of casualties over the next two years, mark my words.

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Resident Alien Season 2.5 - CTV Scifi

Season 2.0

The second half of this second Season of Resident Alien tried to go big, but ultimately it pulled back understanding that, even facing the end of the world, it's not a big show.  At its heart its story comes from a small town mentality, and it thrives off the connections between its populace.  

For me, the specifics of what happens in the show are almost negligible.  The over-arcing story isn't especially unique or satisfying, it's all character dynamics here.  The story is basically something to hang this hour-long comedy-drama upon.   This season did really pushed past the first in the scope of storytelling though, with a global conspiracy of another invading alien race, and a whole message sent from the future, plus deepening the connections of alien abductions to the characters of Patience, and some threads of parent-child relationships.

I like most of the characters on the show and where I typically find the stuff with Mayor Ben very dull his history of sleepwalking turning out to be a result of recurring alien abductions was a nice twist for him to spice him up more.  A whole storyline about developing a resort in town, causing friction between Ben and his wife, seemed to be filling time, as did the story of Darcy's addiction to painkillers tanking her first stable relationship.  I like the ongoing story of Asta and the daughter she gave up for adoption...it's exceptionally well done with potent, soulful performance from Sara Tomko, and Corey Reynolds as Sherriff Mike gets a lot more to chew on this season, including a deeper backstory, a romantic entanglement, and some parental issues. 

But every week I come back for one thing, and one thing primarily: Alan Tudyk's absolutely incredible portrayal of Harry Vanderspeigel/the Alien.  It's absolutely the best comedic performance on television, and I laugh harder at Harry than almost any other character on TV.  He won't ever get recognized for it, as the show is too under the radar, but it never fails to make me hurt laughing.

One final season to come.

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Big Mouth Season 6 - Netflix

Season 1 | Season 4 | Human Resourses

Here's the surprising truth: I think I prefer Human Resources to Big Mouth.  Human Resources is like filthy Pixar, like Monsters Inc. or Inside Out where something very conventional or intangible has this whole entire infrastructure backing it up.  Human Resources was built out of 5 years of Big Mouth so its rich world of hard coded job descriptions and whatnot didn't just arrive out of whole cloth, it owes Bit Mouth everything.  So coming back to Big Mouth and having to deal with Nick (Nick Kroll) and Andrew's (John Mulaney) shtick once again was a little less enticing this time around.

However, Nick really took a back seat this season.  Jesse (Jesse Klein) really took the co-lead alongside Missy (Ayo Edibiri), Matthew (Andrew Rannells) and Andrew.  Jesse was dealing with her hatred towards her pregnant stepmom and her fear of the looming sibling replacing her, to the point that she indirectly develops a yeast infection.  Missy starts dating a new boy, Elijah (Brian Tyree Henry), who discovers he's asexual.  Matthew is very much into dating Jay, for some reason, but that relationship starts taking its toll on both of them.  Andrew finds himself in love with Bernie Sanders (Kristin Schaal) and gets a new love bug (Chris O'Dowd), at the same time his parents (Paula Pell and Richard Kind) relationship seems to be falling apart. Meanwhile Maury is very pregnant, and Connie still wants nothing to do with the baby.

The world of Big Mouth has become so huge that each episode feels pretty jam packed, and somehow it keeps clicking.  It's hilarious, shocking, gross, and sometimes exceptionally poignant and sentimental.  Talking genitalia are still all over this beast, and unexpectedly seeing too much of everything is to be expected.  It's still got a lot of legs, so long as it keeps recognizing the diaspora of sexuality and the stories that can result.

 

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Unsolved Mysteries Volume 3 - Netflix

Season 1

The first episodes of Unsolved Mysteries this season upset me to the point that I would wake up in the middle of the night dreaming about it and then not be able to go back to sleep thinking about the particular horrors that were experienced (both by the victim, and by those who found her) and the mystery behind it all.  You really feel for the family, wrestling with so many questions about the loss of their loved one, and the gut-wrenching empathy you have for them, and the victim... you can feel sick to your stomach afterwards, and helpless.

The nature of the show is that these mysteries are unsolved, so after spending an hour with each case and the facts involved, there's no closure so you're left thoroughly unsatisfied by these stories.  I have to say, as challenging as these are to watch, as emotional as they can get, as heavily as they can weigh on me afterwards, I much prefer this format, which is much more documentary-style, interview-heavy, with timeline graphics and maps when needed, and less reliant on recreations and quick little facts vignettes that the old show would employ.

This season features one episodes on a mass sighting of UFOs that were documented by the local police department and the man operating the weather radar at the time.  It also features a story on the Navajo Nation rangers who would investigate paranormal phenomena on the reserve...everything from UFOs to poltergeists to Bigfoots.  The retired ranger concludes, at the end of the episode, that these things likely bleed from another dimension, a parallel reality.  The Navajo Nation Rangers paranormal investigation unit is a scripted TV series just waiting to happen. (Following this episode is the story of "What happened to Josh" a college student who disappeared a decade or so ago while walking between dorms one night... the answer was not UFOs but that was my immediate thought, connecting the dots before me.)

The theme song still gives me the willies.

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Harley Quinn Season 3

Season 1 

In Harley Quinn's third season of destroying all the mystique of Gotham City, Harls and Ivy are now a solid, if oddly matched, item... in love and making it work despite their differences.  Harley has to deal with a great many things before her, including an over-eager Batgirl wanting to be her friend, her ex-abuser the Joker (now reformed) running for mayor, and discovering the secret of Bruce Wayne and being kind of cool about it.

The show takes the piss out of costumed vigilantes and costumed villains alike.  Harley, being an agent of chaos and straddling the line between them, seems like the only sensible person in a world of madness...until she's not.  Kaley Cuoco (The Flight Attendant) is so damn confident in the role, and just nails every note perfectly.

Meanwhile Clayface gets a job on the set of The Thomas Wayne Story, working with director James Gunn and lead actor Billy Bob Thornton...until he accidentally kills BBT and takes his place, just hoping to high hopes hi isn't found out.  Just like in Resident Alien Alan Tudyk knows it's a go-big-or-go-hope type of performance.  Clayface is not as eccentric as Harry Vanderspeigle, but with that "master thespian" voice with a hint of lyricism to it.  

The jokes, as usual, come fast and heavy, some obvious, some so sly you almost miss them (or maybe I did miss them, because they're so sly).   I sometimes have to brace myself for the level of piss-taking the show takes with characters I otherwise take seriously in the comics, but it's important to remember these aren't actually sacred things and it's okay to make fun of them.  It (hopefully) doesn't dispel their dramatic impetus in other venues.

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The Crown Season 5 - Netflix

Season 1 | Season 4

The third watch has stepped into The Crown and it's maybe its most powerhouse group yet, with Imelda Staunton as Elizabeth, Jonathan Pryce as Philip, Lesley Manville as Margaret, Johnny Lee Miller as John Major, Dominic West as Charles, and Elizabeth Debicki as Diana.

Clearly in this time period of the 1990s, Charles and Diana are just falling apart.  Andrew and Sarah have already split, and the country is starting to really question the necessity of the Royal Family more than ever.  So things are not going well at all, and it's hard to see them improving, as Diana starts lashing out publicly, via a tell-all novel (though disguising her participation, it's obvious) and doing a BBC interview coaxed through a lot of false claims and deceptive tactics by the interviewer to fuel Diana's paranoia.  Debicki is utterly magnificent as Diana, capturing the well known head tilt and soft-spokenness, but really humanizing her, showing all her complexities and in no way deifying her.

Notably handsome man Dominic West (McNulty from The Wire) is a curious choice for Charles, but through posture and mannerisms he manages to evoke the Prince (now King, eh) quite adeptly, showing a side to him that is much stronger and savvier than we've seen from Charles in the past seasons, but also still retaining some of that naive vulnerability.

Staunton's Elizabeth is a much harsher Queen than Olivia Coleman or Clare Foy.  It's understandable, after 40 years as sovereign she's rather entrenched in her role, and her sense of what her duty is has remained unwavering...unfortunately the world has changed around her as she has remained steadfast, and it does come with a bit of reckoning.  Philip spends his time with a new love, horse carriage racing, which he brings his godson's wife into after she loses a child.  It's a reunion of Pryce with Natascha McElhone who costarred together in the underappreciated classic thriller Ronan and that same paternal relationship is rekindled here.

The standout episode of the season is almost devoid of the royals altogether as we find ourselves following Mohammad Al Fayed as he first sees the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Egypt in the 1946 and becomes entranced by the elegance of British royalty.  As he ages, it's his greatest desire to rub shoulders with the god-like beings, and he accumulates wealth and status in very pointed maneuvers, including purchasing the Harrods, and Duke of Windsor's French estate, to bring him ever so close to them.  The most affecting part, however is the relationship Al Fayed forges with the Duke's former valet, Sydney Johnson, who he then hires as tutor in the ways of all things royal. An incredibly sweet platonic romance results. 

With seemingly no expense spared it's frequently "wow"-inducing, and with the in-house drama reaching its heights, exceptionally compelling viewing.

KWIF: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (+2)

 I'm trying something new.  It's been exceptionally difficult to keep up on everything there is to keep up on, both as a consumer and as someone who likes to prattle on about the things he consumes.  So the plan is this: Kent's Week in Film -- each week I have a spotlight movie which I write a longer thought piece about, and then whatever else I watched that week, I do a quick little summary of my thoughts. I'm still working out the whole formulae, so it might evolve from here, but let's just get started...

KENT'S WEEK IN FILM #1
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) d. Ryan Coogler - in cinemarrr
See How The Run (2022) d. Tom George - Disney+
Don't Worry Darling (2022) d. Olivia Wilde - Crave 

Burdened with the achingly unfortunate passing of its franchise lead and the cultural landmark status of its predecessor, Black Panther:Wakanda Forever had much to overcome to be a worthy successor... hmm... overcome may be too strong a word... "work through"... it had much to work through to be a worthy successor. Much like Shuri had to work through her past and reconcile with her legacy in order to rise as the new Black Panther (Not a spoiler, basically revealed in the trailer)

The problem, however, is that Shuri (Letitia Wright) isn't our focal character. The film feels lost without Chadwick Boseman's T'Challa to centre it, and it is looking for a leader everywhere (just like Wakanda)...in Ramonda (an outstanding Angela Bassett), M'Baku (never enough Winston Duke), Okoye (Danai Gurira should have her own franchise), as well as Shuri. At the same time it also has to take the pains of the further world building of Wakanda, and adding more fruit to the MCU pie, by introducing another young hero in Riri Williams (super charming Dominique Thorne), a whole rival (undersea) nation, plus its leader (one of Marvel's oldest characters) Namor (an exceeds expectations Tenoch Huerta). It also needs to pick up the threads of the prior film where Wankanda stopped hiding from the world, and the global earth shake that caused, and the knickers that it twisted all up as a result.

The film, to be honest, has too much to handle adeptly in its 2.5hour+ runtine. Some aspects work very well... Namor and his people aren't overly simplified villains to crush and swat away, and Riri Williams is actually integral to the plot and built out as a character rather than the living Maguffin America Chavez was in the Doctor Strange sequel. But, as a result of these boons, Wakanda suffers from erratic pacing and story beats. I think this would have been better served as a 6-to-8 hour mini series where the intrigue of global politics, the internal strife of faith in leadership, and the emotion component of grieving and loss could breathe more.

To be clear, there's not much in the way of bad scenes here -- Coogler himself is quite the deft craftsman, and surrounded with creatives who make it all look so good -- mostly its sequences are challenged by the amount of time they can spend, and the timing of the edits that hamper their success. The opening funeral montage, for example, is beautiful and sad (that is until the cgi spaceships show up) but it also feels rushed. 

I also can't help but feel the film needed to place Shuri even more as it central figure, but it was afraid to. I bet somewhere, deep in the process, it went from "let's keep the new Black Panther a mystery" to "let's be pretty obvious it has to be Shuri". For well over half the movie I did think we were supposed to wonder who would be the new Panther, since Shuri doesn't really feel like she's being set up for this until very late in the film. Almost too late. To the point of deus ex machina...it needs her to be Black Panther, but has she truly earned it based on her journey here? She's never seemed like much of a fighter, so it seems a stretch, even with a fancy suit and super powers, to put her up against a 400-year-old superstrong flying mutant warrior from the sea. Hell, I though Okoye was the right candidate until they gave her a different (but comics accurate) suit. At the same time, Shuri and Namor, were always on the cusp of something flirtatious but it never quite gets there. This really needed an infusion of sexiness (but then captor-captive relationships are probably not a good idea, so nevermind).

And then there's Everett Ross, yep the token colonizer is back. He has a small bit of purpose here, better employed than he was in the first, to be sure, but again, not and explicitly necessary ingredient in this particular pie. At least it acknowledges that a CIA agent having debts or allegiances to a foreign land (despite being the "good guy" thing to do) makes him a very bad, very compromised CIA agent.

With Boseman gone, Wakanda Forever becomes exceptionally female-centric, with the majority of the cast being women. There's a thread of "powerful black male erasure" in not recasting T'Challa, but it's a damned if you do/damned if you don't scenario.  I lean more on the side of don't than do, so this feels like the right play, but it's certainly not the only play that could have been made .  

The female-centricness is not something trumpeted or even really pointed out. At the same time, it also feels a like it's lacking in a strong female POV, which is maybe why a lot of the film feels like its housekeeping rather than really advancing these characters in a meaningful and empowered way (of course the women of Wakanda have never felt disempowered in any sense).

This may grow on me in a second viewing (as the original did), as I think there's a lot of thought put into it all, and I truly hope there's a Lord of the Rings-style extended cut for home viewing that lets this all breathe more (so many people complaining it's too long, I think it's not long enough).

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From everything I had heard about See How They Run, I thought I would be so in the pocket for this type of lighthearted and pithy murder mystery romp, but I never felt fully invested. Rockwell is great at doing quirk that's more than quirk, and Ronan is just marvellous with full Irish lilt employed, but I'm undecided on whether it was too cheeky or not cheeky enough.

Maybe the conceit of a murder mystery happening on the set of The Mousetrap (1000 performances in, but still very early in it's seemingly endless London theatre run), complete with some actual real-life players (Richard Attenborough, Agatha Christie) was a bit too specific, and perhaps an analogue version (Toast of London's dusty old "The Moose Trap" mayhaps) might have suited the film better.

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Ignoring the media circus surrounding Don't Worry Darling and just watching the film I found myself a bit frustrated with it at first (too many needledrops...the assault of 50's bebop is overwhelming at times), and then surprisingly engaged by it. I had the film's conceit spoiled for me long before watching it, yet still I had much in the way of surprises throughout.  The main criticism of the film is that its conceit doesn't hang together.  There are logic gaps that leave too many questions on the table and suggest there was a possible late-stage rewrite. It does indeed have a "twist" but it's not a "twist ending", as it's pretty fully revealed with a little under half an hour left to play.  

The film starts to show its discordance with its 1950's perfection aesthetic in small bits to start, but ever increasing in nature as it progresses.  Some of these do come with a cool sense of foreboding, while others feel a little too heavy handed.  Florence Pugh and Harry Styles make for a very sexy couple in the onset, and it's a great looking film in general.  Olivia Wilde really shows off what she's capable of here, everything from sex scenes to action sequences, paranoid intrigue to esoteric moments.  If the story isn't sealed tight, it's not as much Wilde's fault, I think, so much as Wilde brings so much to it that it makes these logic gaps less immediate.  I can't strongly recommend it, but at the same time, I wouldn't warn anyone away from it either.  

(Small Spoiler)
My one observation, about halfway through, was that the overwhelming tones of Men's Right Activism, particularly in the media broadcasts, made me think this was some COBRA-like techno-militia bent on world dominance (eg. Springfield from the G.I. Joe cartoon).  You take COBRA out of the cold war and put it into recent years and it's totally an organization started by the MRA set.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Sea Beast

2022, Chris Williams (Big Hero 6) -- Netflix

My new(ish) tactic in writing for this blog is not what we were doing prior, a separate post where all the To Be Written Posts sit which grows and grows, but now a list of Draft Posts that I peck away at until done. They say that in writing, you shouldn't rely upon Being In The Mood, but... that's my thing. Sometimes, when I sit to write a post, all that comes out is, "Movie OK... pretty." Other times, I waste many (not short) paragraphs with unrelated commentary on other things, like the personal challenges of writing blog posts on a site that proclaims to be Movie Reviews. Consider this stuff as all those paragraphs and anecdotes you have to read before the food blogger finally tells you what the fucking ingredients and steps are for the recipe ! 

I commented to Kent as we strolled along the island paths, this summer past (yes, that is how long this one has sat in The Drafts) that what I remembered most about The Sea Beast was its efforts at World Building. The movie is set in a sea going world, sort of pirates in the Caribbean era, which is plagued by sea monsters. Brave crews of ships, such The Inevitable, hunt the dangerous waters and kill the kaiju sea monsters, returning to the King & Queen with their bounty. Captain Crow, of The Inevitable, has a "white whale" hate-on for a particularly large beast they call the Red Bluster, and when the King & Queen tell him that sea monster hunting will become automated, via a massive galleon called Imperator, Crow asks for one more chance to catch the elusive Bluster, and is given it. The final hunt is upset by a cute stowaway Maisie Brumble, who has a different idea about the monsters.

So, Pirates of the Caribbean meets How to Train Your Dragon meets Moby Dick is the movie plot at its simplest, but they do a brilliant job of establishing a vibrant world to run through the story. There are all the obvious things, the details of this nation of islands and sea going vessels, but there were little details, in the background, often left unexplained, such as the mast in Crow's cabin adorned with... trinkets. It made the world feel lived in and alive. It felt like a world that could be explained more in a TV show, or maybe a coffee table book full of notes from the animators and story builders.

So, the story. Spitfire, precocious orphaned-by-monsters Maise Brumble (Zaris-Angel Hator, Morbius) stows aboard The Inevitable which is heading out to do one final battle with the Red Bluster. Maisie almost immediately upsets things, for when they actually meet the object of their hunt, she cuts the line free and the enraged Captain Crow (Jared Harris, Morbius) throws her, and her benefactor Jacob (Karl Urban, Morbius Priest) into the sea. And then Red, as Maisie calls it, swallows them whole.

But its a rescue, not a meal. They are deposited on an island where monsters abound, but they are not what everyone thinks them to be. Maisie, through a quick empathic nature, realizes Red, who is a she not an it, has just been fighting people because people have been hunting it, and that is the legacy of all the monster hunters. But Crow won't be denied his quarry, and finally does succeed in capturing Red, bringing it back to the island where the Queen & King live only to... well, you know how it goes in these family friendly flicks, reveal said Queen & King as the real villains, redeem Crows raging heart and unveil the sea beasts as the real victims. All the while, we are given a real cinematic eye to the animation, unusually more human-like qualities to the characters (animated people are usually just exaggerations) and quite the rousing story.

Hmm. Despite all those words, "Movie good... pretty."

Ed. Note: I am still pecking away at the last few 31 Days of Halloween posts, so should you be inclined, scroll back to the time-machined posts as they appear at the end of October.